They also shouldn't get a lock-in on proprietary standards/protocols used for basic functions. Skype comes to mind. While it's good to see a Linux version, there should be full free access for others to code their own apps and inter-operate fully.

I like the idea of hardware being open to other OSes. I'm wondering how much of a role the OS or replaceable firmware plays in power management and battery charge control. If those functions are not handled properly, problems could extend beyond performance iss

Apparently security agencies were unhappy that encryption and decentralised super nodes made Skype too hard to intercept. The government made funds/incentives available, and Microsoft bought Skype. Microsoft immediately switched Skye away from the peer-to-peer supernodes and over to servers under the control of Microsoft and their government agency sponsors..

Since the VOIP traffic now goes through Microsoft servers, and Microsoft has the encryption keys, they and their partners can monitor all Skype calls and messages.

Opening the protocols/standards would allow for decentralizing again, which they wouldn't accept.

Where do you get that dumb idea from? The only source for this claim that there's a backdoor is a crackpot blogspot blog. Wow, really credible.

And Skype doesn't send all traffic through supernodes anyway - calls are still peer to peer with supernodes being used for discovery (although I think they may also step in if firewall punching is needed as well).

Rather than fine Microsoft 7 billion dollars or whatever, I hope the EU takes them up on their offer to extend the browser choice screen a few more years. Like 20 in total (2009-2029).

When I installed Puppy GNULinux the first thing it asked when I clicked on internet was, "Which browser do you wish to use?" It then downloaded and installed my choice. It really should be standard setup on all OSes, but especially Microsoft's monopoly PC-OS, to let the USER decide what he wants as his/her default web brow

Why should the EU Commission take them up on that offer?
The Commission should fine them the 7 billion and keep fining them until they're cease to be in violation of EU antitrust legislation.
The browser choice is not voluntary, it was implemented to stay in compliance with that legislation, Microsoft can choose to either keep the the browser choice screen or not ship a browser with windows at all(including browsers hidden in the OS)

Asking the Commission to not fine you and in return you will honor the

They've already restored the browser choice screen, and did so within two days of being informed of the issue. And they're not just saying "we'll honor the original agreement", they're saying "we'll extend the existing agreement by over 200 times the breach period".

I don't see why they would get smacked harder, given their quick turnaround and fairly generous restitution offer.

The grandparent was talking about the boot loader issue. It's not just a matter of product quality. It prevents the buyer from purchasing the hardware from one supplier, and the operating system from another supplier, which in turn prevents competition on the market, which usually leads to more expensive products and less innovations.

If there are natural reasons you can't run a different operating system on a computer (for example, there's no other OS written for that CPU), so be it, but we don't have to al

Sure, go after Apple's iOS boot loader lock first, since they have several times the number of devices as Microsoft that are affected by a lock.

Microsoft has a monopoly on the desktop. Apple doesn't have a monopoly in any of its market segments, so it doesn't have to play by the same rules. Being a monopolist isn't illegal in and of itself, but it does mean you are subject to more stringent regulations to ensure you aren't using your dominant position to lock out competitors.

Mac OS X != iOS, as much as the Lion releases appear to want you to believe it. The actual bot lockdown on these things was Samsung's, which is why the same buffer overflow attack for the check code worked around it for the initial jail-breaks.

Technically, there's really nothing preventing you from jail-breaking these devices and running your own OS in place of iOS, other than the alternatives out there so far pretty much suck so there's not a huge incentive for capable hackers to do it. The graphics and

What boot loader lock? On x86, it doesn't exist (yet). Motherboard makers are free to let any OS install or not as they see fit (if the OEM locks it down, bitch to them about it, since they are the ones doing it, not MS). And on ARM, Windows has such a small market share, it can't be considered monopolistic (since MS is nowhere near being able to exploit a monopoly position). MS is free to require ARM tablet makers who make Windows RT tablets lock the bootloader as much as they want, since it doesn't matter

And on ARM, Windows has such a small market share, it can't be considered monopolistic (since MS is nowhere near being able to exploit a monopoly position).

Yes it can, MS has a de facto monopoly on the desktop(win 8), they are using that as leverage in another market(by blocking dual boot), I don't know about US antitrust legislation but that is explicitly forbidden according to EU antitrust legislation.

Are you talking about UEFI secure boot? That's not a "microsoft" thing, that's a UEFI thing. Just to be clear, it was jointly developed by AMD, American Megatrends Inc., Apple Computer, Inc., Dell, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Insyde, Intel, Lenovo, Microsoft, Phoenix Technologies. All this whining about an optional security feature sounds like a lot of whining about nothing to me. If you want to load linux on a machine that shipped with windows (and therefore UEFI Secure boot enabled) you just turn off UEFI secure boot. It would be trivial for anyone capable of installing linux in the first place. If a vendor wants to sell pc's with linux preloaded, they can ship the pc with secure boot disabled. If an OS distributor wants to get their OS properly signed so they can use secure boot, they can do that too.

Uh, one thing at a time. Think of how long this browser investigation has taken. Even this is taking a long time. They can't just simply prosecute MS for being MS, there has to be specific stuff. One tie-in at a time.

You must live in a shitty town, because instead of just ONE phone company for everything, I can choose between ~50 local carriers and ~20 long distance carriers. I call that an improvement, so the breakup of the monopoly was worthwhile.

Coming from Microsoft, Ballmer could kill someone in front of a lot of public (probably throwing a chair on his head), and could try to get free claiming that it was a software bug. But acknowledging that 3 years late is malice, not stupidity.

" 'we learned recently that weâ(TM)ve missed serving the BCS software to the roughly 28 million PCs running Windows 7 SP1.' Microsoft says it started distributing the BCS software to Windows 7 SP1 machines on 3 July, a couple of business days after discovering the problem."

If the users have already turned-on their new machines, then they are already PAST the browser choice screen. It is pointless to install it after the fact and Microsoft is in violation of the terms of the lawsuit. Furthermore does anyone really believe it was a "mistake"? Last time I told a cop I made a mistake and thought the green left arrow w/ red stoplight meant "go" instead of stop, he just laughed and gave me a ticket. There's really no room to let Microsoft go, else it sets the precedent that criminals can just say "ooops I made a mistake" and be left free to go.

If you fine a company because of a bug in their software this is really not understanding how software development works.

Any sanctions won't be for "a bug in their software". They will be for:1) Violating the agreement they made in place of the fine for the past violation, and2) Filing a false declaration of compliance with the agreement in December 2011.

When you have a legal obligation to do something, and when you declare in an official legal document that you have, in fact, done what you had an obligation to do, well, the fact that you didn't do what you had an obligation to do and hadn't actually verified that you had before you made the legal declaration has consequences.

>>>If you fine a company because of a bug in their software this is really not understanding how software development works.

This isn't a bug. This is leaving-out the installation of a distinct piece of software: the browser select program. It would be equivalent to if Microsoft "forgot" to include Windows Media Player for new Win7 PCs. (Which never happens.)

It may have been a mistake due to incompetence, but more likely it was down on purpose. Microsoft is only admitting it now because they were caught, else we'd not hear about it.

>>>>>Unfortunately, the engineering team responsible for maintenance of this code did not realize that it needed to update the detection logic for the BCS software when Windows 7 SP1 was released last year.>>>>Sounds believable to me. A mammoth software company where the right hand might not know what the left hand is doing? Plausible, totally plausible.

About as plausble as Microsoft claiming they didn't mean to block DR-DOS from being installed on Win95 machines. (not.) Really:

Yeah, it'd be like fining a company because a bug in their inventory management and distribution system put rat poison in the breakfast cereal boxes they shipped to supermarkets. That'd show a complete laack of understanding of how distribution works.

If you fine a company because of a bug in their software this is really not understanding how software development works.

If you don't, then it is really not understanding how companies work, or the law.

If you went over the speed limit, then you went over the speed limit. Nobody cares why, if it was intentional or if you didn't look at the speedometer. It is your responsibility to not go over the speed limit, and if you did it by mistake then too bad - your mistake, your ticket.

Same here. Their mistake, their ticket. It really is as simple as that.

If you deviate from that legal principle by a single inch, then everyone will start to claim "it was a software bug" for everything, because that is how lawyers work - they always include every possible defense that has the slightest chance of being successful.

Fining them is 100% the correct decision, absolutely no doubt about that.

In a Perry Mason novel, (probably The Case of the Ice Cold Hands), the witness in the stand will confess to murder, and the DA Ham Burger would be forced to argue, (because he is charging his sister with that murder), "no you did not!".

In most cases bugs in your code is usually bad for your business. But Microsoft has bugs that are peculiar in that, it helps the company. It breaks competitor's products from the DR-DOS days or help it avoid compliance with court rulings... You know at some point people are going to say, "this level of incompetence is simply not possible, it must be intentional". And Microsoft will pull a Ham Burger and argue, "No! We are that incompetent!".

These are recent. Microsoft systematically attacked its competitors with selective bugs. IIS will have bugs that violate MS's own API guidelines and documentation but somehow mysteriously they would not affect IE, but would make Netscape bad and unstable. MS-Office will have bugs in save/restore that will make WordPerfect first and OpenOffice later to fail in reading them right. Initially Word alone would read/write them correctly. It eventually came back to bite their own as^H^H tails because they could no

I doubt this is anything other than an innocent mistake by MS. Surely nobody thinks MS would be stupid enough to leave out the browser ballot on purpose and risk 10% of their turnover? I fully expect somebody responsible is currently pursuing opportunities outside of MS.

Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence. What's more likely, MS decided to gamble 10% of their turnover and years of court battles to try and sneak the ballot out of their European versions, or somebody pushed the North American version of SP1 out to Europe without realizing?

The browser ballot isn't aimed at people like us. It's aimed at the kind of people who think that "the big blue E" is "the internet". The whole point is to make inexperienced users aware that there are other choices out there.

The browser ballot isn't aimed at people like us. It's aimed at the kind of people who think that "the big blue E" is "the internet".

Chrome. Firefox. Opera.

They live and die by the add click.

Opera --- the weakest of the lot --- pushed hardest for the ballot.

It is at the very least disingenuous, I think, to claim that the only purpose of the ballot was to serve the interests of the people and not to give a leg up to Microsoft's political rivals and competitors,

The purpose was absolutely to give a leg up to Microsoft's business rivals and competitors. Because Microsoft was convicted of suppressing its business rivals through monopoly abuse. And having a robust marketplace is definitely in the interests of the people when compared to having no choice.

... I get a not-very-computer-literate relative asking me "why TF does my new machine keep on and on asking me if I really want to use IE, despite me keeping on telling it yes I do, and please shut up about it?"

The EU says M$ has to inform users they can use other browsers. Why? Does Ford, Mercedes, BMW or any other car maker have to inform their owner they can use a different radio in the dash? or that they can use different tires than what comes on them? And why is this not an issue for Apple and Safari? Or better yet, why not an issue for Ubuntu? Ubuntu does not inform me that i can use something other then Firefox when i log in.

Yes actually. Ford, Mercedes, and BMW are forced to acknowledge that aftermarket car parts made by other manufacturers will work in their vehicles, allowing a competitive market for replacement parts to exist.

Then you obviously need to learn how to use Google. Or Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]. Or not, since I just gave you the link. If you are to lazy to click on that: they got fined €860 million for anti-competitive practices, plus had a lot of compliance stuff they also had to do.

Because to be convicted of monopoly abuse, you need to have a monopoly first.

MS abused it's monopoly (and monopoly does not need to 100% market share, the term is market dominating position, at least here around) in desktop OSes to force IE on users => e.g. it punished OEMs that preinstalled anything not approved by MS. => they basically managed to get that many normal users associated the IE logo as "the Internet",... => on a standard Win box you need usually IE at least once to fetch an alternative browser,...

In the browser case where MS was fined, one of parts of the settlements was that MS agreed to offer a selection screen where users can select during the PCs setup what browser they want to use, first to educate users that there are alternatives, and second to help diversity in the browser market.

MS in Win7SP1 just managed to forget that selection screen. It was just a mistake. Well if you are on probation, which MS is, you should really make sure that you follow the imposed sanctions, or you need to pay for your mistakes.

So if it was just a mistake, than obviously MS has not communicated strongly enough to their employees that their are a convicted company on probation, management error by MS, so accept responsibility, pay a 2-3 digit million euro fine, and everything is fine, that should make you remember not to forget the browser selection screen on your next release,...

There's a bit of a difference. MS was convicted of using their OS monopoly to harm existing competitors in the web browser space. Because of the closed nature of the entire iOS environment, there has never been a competing browser to Safari in iOS.

One could argue that there is an abuse of position by Apple, but unless/until the courts decide there is, nothing will be done.

They are reskins of webkit. Opera you are correct about as well, no other engine has gotten through the approval process yet. But Opera is proof it is possible for Gecko might get through.

Why not? They're doing the exact same think MS did in the 90's.

No they aren't. Microsoft in the 1990s was using their monopoly in operating systems to engage in an unfair trade practice against Netscape. Apple would need to have an actual monopoly for that law to apply.

Apple is just one of many manufacturers => hence they are rather free to do what they want (mostly, in the early itunes days they did have a near monopoly in the digital music market, and a number of regulations was about to kick in forcing Apple to make their DRM available to competing manufacturers, at least in some European countries, but Apple decided to go DRM-less on their own before any legal rulings happened)

MS is in a market controlling position when it comes to desktop OSes, has been and still

At least when it comes to the table space, there's the iPad, and then there's the wannabes. This would probably not be an issue, except they disallow other browsers to use their own JavaSCript rendering engine, and instead they have to wrap a UIWebView in their browser. THis has two effects: (1) you don't get high performance JavaScript, and (2) they disable JIT'ing in a wrapped view, so the performance is never comparable to Safaru.

Admittedly, this comes about from the technical chicken-and-egg problem of

>>>The choice people have now regarding browsers could be argued is a result of this litigation by the EU.

Doubtful. Interner Explorer share had been eroding for almost 10 years. By the time the browser choice screen started appearing on EU screens, Explorer share had already fallen below 50%. The browser choice screen was not needed since the free market (especially Google and Mozilla) had already erased Microsoft's dominance with IE.

Well..... why do you think Apple approved Opera Mini for use on their iOS devices? I'm sure they were very aware that it was Opera who sued Microsoft (and won), and if Apple turned them down then Opera would sue Apple next for abuse of their dominant cellphone position.

Yes I know Mini is not a "real browser", but that doesn't negate my point. Apple had to *approve* Opera Mini for distribution to iOS devices first, and they knew if they did not allow it, then Opera would likely sue them just as Opera sued Microsoft.

Clear? Or do I need to repeat myself a third time before you'll finally READ what I wrote and UNDERSTAND what you read?

No, the reason Opera Mini was approved was because it did not violate any app store guidelines. If apple truly wanted to avoid litigation, they would approved Opera Mobile. And Opera did not choose to litigate against Apple for not approving Opera Mobile.

Hint: These are differently packaged Safari Webviews, not browsers. Opera Mini just passes below the iTunes Gestapo radar screen, because the web browsing part is in the cloud, hence Opera Mini is formally not a web browser.

Today's phones and tablets are computers. Small, slow, and with limited memory but still a computer. Certainly more powerful than the 64 kilobyte or 1 megabyte Commodores and Amigas I used back in the day to write reports, listen to music, and crunch lab data. (If you disagree then please explain how a phone or tablet is not a computer, even though they have more power than my old C64 and A500.)

The issue is leveraging dominant market power in the desktop OS market in the EU in an anticompetitive way in the existing-and-distinct desktop browser market. Something Apple can't do with desktop Safari, since it doesn't have dominant market power in the desktop OS market.

In fact, I'm pretty sure Safari is the ONLY browser you can use in iOS (everything else is just a reskin).

iOS isn't even the #1 mobile OS in the EU, much less as dominant in that space as Windows is in the desktop OS market. Market power in the market that is being leveraged is a key factor here.

No, it's a RELIC of the 90's. Today *EVERY* OS comes bundled with a default browser. And yet MS is the only company that's still singled out for this practice. In fact, Apple has not only bundled Safari in iOS, but also BLOCKED THE INSTALLATION OF OTHER BROWSERS. And no one has even so much as raised an eyebrow at them.

Sorry for the self-response, but I just realized that it might mean Europeans are *dumber* than those redneck Americans. The reason is that in America there's no legal requirement for some browser selection screen, but Firefox and Chrome have huge marketshares that are comparable to Europe anyway and there was no need for some ridiculous "selection screen" to do it.

This made sense when the EU first started moving against MS. It made less sense by the time judgement was finally reached and the whole business is pretty much irrelevant now. I was actually quite annoyed when my Win7 machine started informing me that I needed to choose a browser last week, one of Firefox / Chrome / Opera / the Apple Konqueror derivative / one other option.

The battle is over. MS forced IE upon us for a while but they caved in years ago. Win7 has been out for years now and it seems no-o

Actually, they enforce rules against anti competitive behavior quite strongly against local cartels.Intel & MS just happen to be reported about in the US because they are US companies, AND they have not been able to contribute to a PAC to get the rulings defanged.

What about iOS and the fact they force safari browser on you. Don't even allow to change it off the default browser? gonna go after apple any time soon? been going over MS for less.

Antitrust actions are largely about misusing dominant market power. What market power you have in the market you are leveraging is a key factor. Microsoft Windows is quite dominant in the desktop OS market in the EU. Apple iOS isn't even #1, much less dominant, in the mobile OS market in the EU.

Bundling, as such, isn't the fundametnal issue. Its just the means by which Microsoft was found to have leveraged their dominant position in the desktop OS market.